Once a safe place for Black travelers during Jim Crow, North Omaha ‘castle’ earns national recognition

Wesley Dacus doesn’t mind the attention his North Omaha home garners — the people stopping to take photos, the notes left on his door, the passersby wondering if he has a room to rent. Dacus welcomes the opportunity to talk about the historic house.

“Every time people come by, they just kind of marvel at it,” the 76-year-old Omaha native said.

“I even got guys that come up in Ubers and say, ‘Hey, man, do you got an apartment for rent?”’ 

The 116-year-old home on the corner of Burdette Street and Florence Boulevard has decades’ worth of stories to share. It historically has been referred to as the Burkenroad home, Broadview Hotel and Trimble Castle — names reflecting the evolution of the neighborhood where it sits.

From 1939 to 1966, it was listed as a Green Book site for African American travelers.

In December, a monthslong local effort to add the home to the National Register of Historic Places cleared the final hurdle and officially joined the federal list of historically significant properties deemed worthy of preservation.

“It’s such a distinct building, and I think a lot of people have driven by it and noticed it because of its distinction but haven’t fully understood the story,” said Shelley McCafferty, vice president of Preserve Omaha, a community group that spearheaded the effort. 

A story to tell

Today, the home is a fourplex. Dacus and his wife, Lillian, stay on the first floor. The others are apartments that Dacus rents out.

Family photos line most of the first-floor walls. Eiffel Tower paintings, mini statues and plants fill various rooms. Shortly before Christmas, stockings with tenants’ names hung along an oak staircase inside the foyer. Dacus credits Lillian for the personal touches. 

But for many, it’s the building’s exterior that draws attention, and it hasn’t changed much over the years. 

“It’s like a classic car,” said Dacus, who bought the home in 2007. “You want to keep it original.”

Designed by architect Joseph P. Guth in 1909, the home has elements of Eclectic Period Revival along with Scottish baronial architecture. It was constructed with more than 40 different styles of concrete blocks manufactured by Omaha Concrete Stone Company. Along with the distinctive three-story tower on the corner, the house has different style windows throughout.

“I think the goal in this particular house was to try to use as many shapes and types of blocks as they could,” said McCafferty, who works as the preservation administrator for the City of Omaha. 

Guth built the home for Max and Flora Burkenroad, a Jewish family with businesses in what was known as Near North Side, a neighborhood north of downtown Omaha.

At the time, many Jewish families lived in the Near North Side, which largely spanned from Nicholas Street to Locust Street and then from North 16th Street to North 30th Street. 

But roughly 10 years after their new home was built, the Burkenroads left and headed west near Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood.

Their move happened alongside deeper change that was occurring in the Near North Side, said Adam Fletcher Sasse, historian and editor of the blog North Omaha History. The family was among the first who left the neighborhood during a wave of white flight. 

The 1919 lynching of Will Brown in downtown Omaha helped spark that initial wave. 

A white mob went to the Near North Side and was met with U.S. Army soldiers who were called in to defuse the situation. The Army drew a red line around the Near North Side that kept the city’s Black population confined to that area. The area became redlined, a practice that restricted where Black people could live. It remained in place for decades.

“That was the first formal redlining in Omaha by the federal government,” Fletcher Sasse said. “There was a lot more that happened later, but that was the beginning of it.”

By 1920, the Burkenroads had sold their home to Harry and Fanny Rothkup, who were Polish immigrants. 

From the late 1920s through the late 1930s, different families lived in the home for short periods of time. A woman named Ella Jackson operated the home as a rooming house, dubbed the Broadview Hotel, for a stretch in the ’30s. 

“The reality is that was the beginning of the neighborhood around the house changing, and it was the beginning of the house’s role in the neighborhood changing,” Fletcher Sasse said. 

Safe places to stop 

By 1939, Charles and Rosa Trimble, an African American couple, had purchased the property and promptly listed it in the Green Book as the Broadview Hotel.

“The Negro Motorist Green Book” was a guidebook created by New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green that was published from 1936 to mid-’60s. It featured lists of hotels, gas stations, homes, drugstores and other businesses welcoming to African Americans. 

Black people were often denied the ability to stay in hotels during the Jim Crow era in the U.S., so Black residents opened up their homes to travelers. 

From the 1930s into the 1960s, there were dozens of Green Book sites across Nebraska. Though Omaha had the most, sites also sprouted up in Lincoln, Grand Island, Hastings, Chadron, Fremont, Ainsworth, Scottsbluff, Sidney and Valentine. 

In the redlined Near North Side neighborhood, Black people created a community and infrastructure of their own. Between the 1930s and 1950s, social capital in North Omaha among Black people grew and a strong middle class emerged, Fletcher Sasse said.

Businesses such as the Jewell Building — home to the legendary Dreamland Ballroom, a barbershop and pool hall at the time — began to spring up in the community. The businesses, organizations and churches that were established during that time led to the growth of the social fabric of North Omaha.

Charles Trimble, a local businessman, and his family played a significant role in that growth.

“They really did a lot with respect to being a touchstone and being a cornerstone of the African American community,” Fletcher Sasse said. 

The Trimbles listed their home in the Green Book until 1966. 

“I had some great experiences growing up and certainly being in that house,” said Von R. Trimble Jr., 75, grandson of Charles and Rosa Trimble. 

Trimble remembers staying upstairs at his grandparents’ home until he was around 7 or 8 years old. He said there were about eight rooms that his grandparents would rent out to people.

From a business standpoint, Trimble said his grandfather did a number of things. He was a cook, club owner and bail bondsman. He also helped start a church and was a member of the fraternal social group the Freemasons. 

“He was a good man to everybody,” Trimble said. “He treated everyone the same as he would treat me.”

When Charles Trimble died in 1959, his son Von R. Trimble Sr. took over keeping up the Broadview.  

“There was a lot of activity in the house, especially on weekends because the bands that were coming through would leave and then head out, and then there’d maybe be some others coming in Thursday or Friday, so it was a pretty steady, constant flow,” Trimble said. 

Keeping the story going 

The Broadview was added to the National Register on Dec. 18, joining more than 100 other Omaha properties. Its approval came as a relief — McCafferty had worried that federal funding cuts could delay the process.

“We worked on it for a long time, and we’re thrilled to have it done,” she said. 

Community leaders say the designation is important. 

“It’s kind of one of a kind, especially in this area of the city,” said Eric L. Ewing, executive director of the Great Plains Black History Museum.

Beyond its unique design, Ewing said the home plays a deeper role in the broader context of North Omaha and U.S. history. 

That history will take center stage in February when the museum opens an exhibit on Green Book locations across Nebraska and U.S. sundown towns — all-white communities hostile to people of color. 

Dacus said he’s thankful for the opportunity to give people a place to stay. He prides himself on charging reasonable rent and ensuring he and his wife make all tenants feel welcome. 

“We pray every day about it, and we’re just happy to be here,” Dacus said.

Dacus, now retired after more than 40 years working in education with Omaha Public Schools, doesn’t plan to look after the home forever. When he turns 80, he intends to let one of his children take over. But for now, whenever Dacus isn’t golfing or tending to his plants, he’s always open to talking about what makes his home special. 

He sees having the home listed in the National Register as an opportunity to commend all of those who opened their doors to strangers in need. 

Dacus isn’t looking for anything extravagant to celebrate the listing. Beyond having a community celebration later this year, he wants something both neighbors and those passing by can read about and be proud of. 

“I want a plaque on that corner of the street that actually tells them what this house is all about,” he said.